but president obama coming back from vacation in hawaii. that's an indication that some kind of deal -- however small -- is definitely coming. i want to point out, and i know you've been negative on this mastercard data on retail sales, and everybody thinks it's going to be a mess for the holiday season. i want to point out that the stocks are not acting that way. that this is a disaster for the season. the s&p retail index hit an historic high on december 3rd. historic high. since then, it has only been down about 3%. these stocks are not acting like there's a disaster. i can give you several reasons why they're not down so far. number one, we are going to see eps growth in the fourth quarter from some of them because of the extra week that there is. number two, we've had much lower cotton costs this year. their overall costs are lower. that's helping their earnings. number three, inventory levels are much lower. and that's going to help their gross margins. number four, we had pretty good gdp numbers in q-3. number five, home prices are i